GeekSpeak

Rest in Peace, NetGear.

By Johnny Fuery ⋅ April 3, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

No, there was no announcement you missed today.

I’ve used their FVS318 Router/Firewall product for years, more or less standardizing on it as the platform of choice for all of my client’s offices. That backfired for me this week.

On Monday, I got a call from a brand new client from an office I’d never visited before. It was an emergency. Their internet was offline. Great, an opportunity to be a hero, right?

Well, I diagnosed pretty quickly that their existing gateway was dead. No worries; that’s what Best Buy is for — overpriced networking gear in a hurry. After getting a little lost first, of course.

Everything worked fine for two days. Then, today, the Firewall would intermittently drop it’s connection to the internet. A reboot fixed it every time… for 5 minutes. I troubleshooted my happy little arse off for 90 minutes on it, then decided to take it back and exchange it. What the heck?

In the meantime, naturally, I grab a spare Linksys Wireless Router WRT54G device and get it working in… oh, six minutes.

I get the second Netgear Firewall unit in, configure it identically, it works for about fifteen minutes, then ceases to route. Heck, it doesn’t even respond to a ping from the internal network any longer, let alone show me it’s own built-in web utility. Or, you know, work.

Screw it. My $35 old school Linksys device wins. I am never buying a Netgear device again.

I’ve been scratching my head trying to think of what went wrong with the device, and the only difference I can think of in terms of configuration is the fact that it’s using a static IP instead of PPPoE like the other dozen I’ve installed in the past few years.

So, sell your NetGear stock. Ditto on whomever manufactures D-Link products for the same reason. Buy Cisco.

P.S., Yes I’m still alive. Just been busy.